My guess is this will devalue art overall. That is indeed momentous it’s been a corner stone of modern culture for about 500 years. What does a world without art look like.
Does a new form of “art” evolve that makes use of these seemingly omnipotent brushes?
I think it will devalue visual art the same way photography has devalued photorealistic paintings
It’s simply a new tool for artists to create art with. It will change art but I doubt it will destroy art. Like you said, a new form of art will evolve from it.
Sadly, I feel it has already started to devalue art. I find myself unironically wondering whether some pieces are AI-generated on my feed. When I can't tell, I mentally devalue the image.
I'm becoming more and more redpilled on the generative art stuff. The risk-benefit analysis checks out in favour of LLMs, but maybe art is something we can keep our Markov chains off of.
It becomes all about the artist; something that can not be replicated. What the art says about artist, what the artist intended, and the mere fact that a specific artist created it. Photography played a part in engendering this transition to "modern art" in the last century.
Graphic arts have always been about the money, so I'd guess whatever happens on the technical side will have little effect on the art market in general.
For instance the emergence of extremely good reproductions didn't affect the price of the original paintings. Same way the evolution of photoshop doesn't have much effect on the price of picture prints.
Now stock photography could be impacted. But otherwise generative AI only opens the door to more picture production, and won't be put in competition to the traditional painting/prints market/direct artist support market.
> What does a world without art look like.
As an aside I always find it funny when 'art' is used as short form for 'pictures', especially in the world's context.
I dunno. The value of the type of art that is a "corner stone of modern culture" (i.e. the type of art you see in museums, etc.) doesn't seem to be related to how hard it is to produce.
For example, Flag by Jasper Johns sold for $110M in 2010 [1]. The fact that almost anyone could make something like this (the subject matter is public domain, and the technique is within reach of anyone who has taken an art class) doesn't seem to have diminished its value.
And as for all of the art you see in the everyday world, being able to design it more easily would likely lead to more of it, not less. Instead of seeing the same 20 things that they carry at IKEA over and over, you'd have custom artwork everywhere.
> i.e. the type of art that you see in museums, etc.)
Nope. I mean the visual art we see all around us. If it’s trivial to generate it’ll be everywhere and nobody will value it. It will become a annoyance to people - so what fills that space then? Bare walls? Or will things go to a new level. Was kind of my line of thinking.
Looking forward to the day I have a little stage in my living room where little androids act out scenes from Shakespeare, Beckett. Ha I bet Beckett never saw that one coming.
I have paintings hanging in my house produced by artists I personally know. If anything, I think ubiquitous, throw away and infinitely reproducible digital art makes my paintings even more special to me (although none are worth all that much to start with).
Does a new form of “art” evolve that makes use of these seemingly omnipotent brushes?